Thanks pigeonlady. That was such an interesting read. So how many acres do you gather were needed for everything mentioned there? I would have no idea for lack of experience raising grains and hay for livestock. Sounds like an awful lot of work.

Thanks pigeonlady. That was such an interesting read. So how many acres do you gather were needed for everything mentioned there? I would have no idea for lack of experience raising grains and hay for livestock. Sounds like an awful lot of work.

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As I recall from my history lessons, one-half to two-thirds of the grain crops were used to maintain the draft animals. Remember, this was before wide scale farm mechanization that happened in the 20' and 30's. My family generally farmed about 160 acres in the Dakotas' with maybe forty acres for a cash crop. The rest was pasture and grain with maybe 3-4 acres for the farmstead.

Yes, I was wondering how much land you would need to be able to do all that. Not just that but the type of land. I know the families down here in our little "holler" between the mountains couldn't do it all. But they sure did a lot.

Here's an article written by an old gentleman who grew up down the road here. He tells of how they lived back in the '30's. He stopped by right out of the blue with his 90 year old sister last week and we had a real nice visit. He's so interesting to talk to and I picked his brains on a lot of stuff. I'll ask him how much land his family had.

He talks a lot about the sounds around here. Sound bounces around all over the place. You never know where it's coming from. Many times I'm in the barn and I hear voices. I go out to see who it is and no one's there. The first time it happened I walked all the way back to the house and down the drive to see who'd stopped by. It turned out to be our neighbors down and across the road sitting on their porch quietly talking!